5 Things to Look for When Revising Your Paper
BY SHEILA MCCOMBS, APOLLON EDITOR, FALL 2020
Submitting a research paper to a journal is a monumental thing to do and it can be nerve-racking as well. Here are some things to look for when looking over your paper before you submit!
1. Look out for the little things
It can be easy to forget the simple things when working on a project as big as a research paper, but when you go to submit it, make sure that you check all areas of the paper for minor mistakes. This can include page numbers and headers, because it is important to make sure that the formatting fits into how you want the paper to look overall. This is also a good time to check over all of your citations and your works cited page to make sure everything matches up, as this is one of the first things that we look for when we read over papers that come in! Overall, just make sure that none of the smaller details have been missed as that is a great way to make sure your paper looks professional at first glance.
2. Check your title again
A title is literally the first thing that any reader or editor will look at when they see your paper. It is important that the title both catches the attention of the reader and is clear on what your topic is. A title that is eye-catching but doesn’t accurately say what your paper is about is not helpful, so it’s important that the title correlates to the ideas in the paper. When you go to submit, check over your title again to make sure it helps your paper stand out against the other submissions.
3. Remember your thesis
It is easy in a long paper to get so caught up in presenting your evidence that you can forget to bring everything back together under your central thesis. A good way to make sure that everything is connected is to look at the first and last sentence of each of your paragraphs. This will make sure that you always come back to the center points of the thesis throughout your paper. A source doesn’t help your argument if you can’t explain why you needed it or what significance it has!
4. Watch your page length
When we look at papers, one of the things that we debate about most often is page length. An academic paper should have a certain amount of length to it, roughly about ten pages at the minimum, in order for it to be considered a research paper. However, there is always a concern of having too many pages when they are not needed. When you look over your paper for the last time, make sure that you look for both things that don’t need to be in the paper and anything that you may have missed.
5. Take a deep breath and congratulations!
Once again submitting a paper is no small feat and when you finally do submit, take a moment to be proud of yourselves. There will of course be more edits to come once it is edited and accepted, but at this moment your work is done. Have confidence in your abilities and your topics, and hopefully you’ll hear back soon!